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Labor body accuses the government of exploiting workers

Government-run businesses and government agencies are illegally listing employees as “individual contractors” to cut costs, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英) and the Taiwan Labor Front (TLF) said yesterday.

“We’ve discovered more than 5,000 cases in which government agencies and government-run businesses are hiring people as independent contractors instead of as regular employees to avoid fulfilling their responsibilities as an employer,” TLF secretary-­general Son Yu-lian (孫友聯) told a press conference at the Legislative Yuan. “The government is setting a very bad example for the private sector.”

Individual contractors are working as mail carriers, meter readers for the Taiwan Water Corporation, at Academia Historica and at the Executive Yuan’s Central Taiwan Joint Services Center, Son said.

“How can you justify that some mail carriers — who start work at the same time, under the same supervisors, do the same job and get off at the same time as regular mail carriers — are contractors while others are not?” Son asked.

“The most ridiculous part is that these contractors are not only not entitled to redundancy payments, but could be required to pay breach of contract penalties if they want to quit before their contract expires,” Son said. “I’m afraid that with the government setting such an example, private companies will quickly follow suit.”

According to labor and contract laws, an employer is required to pay part of an employee’s labor and national health insurance premiums, as well as contribute to the employee’s retirement fund. But when the firm — or a government agency — chooses to contract out the job, it does not have to worry about these payments.

While most contractors are companies, there are also individual contractors such as architects or accountants who may also bid for project contracts from the government or a ­government-run business.

Since individual contractors work on government projects on a contract basis, they enjoy a high degree of freedom, but are entitled to no employee benefits and could be penalized for terminating their contract early.

“Government agencies and government-run businesses are obviously doing so to cut costs, because a large number of individual contractors appeared just after the Council of Labor Affairs [CLA] announced that everyone working for the government would be covered by the Labor Standards Act [勞動基準法],” Huang said. “It’s shocking that the government, which repeatedly said that protecting workers was a priority, is exploiting its own employees in such a way.”

CLA official Huang Yao-tsang (黃耀滄) said at the press conference that if the TLF’s claims were true, the government agencies and government-run companies were clearly breaking the law.

“We will launch an investigation into the cases you mentioned today, and will urge local labor authorities to take appropriate action if our investigation finds the allegations to be true,” he said.
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